“You’re still alive,” he pointed out quietly. “Luna, as you call her, has chosen you as her family. That takes something extraordinary and cannot be coerced.”

“I found her nearly dead, thanks to your soldiers. After she healed, she wouldn’t return to the wild. I tried.” I didn’t owe him anything, but I felt compelled to explain myself.

Torran nodded, his earlier anger either forgotten or carefully hidden. I had a feeling it was the latter. “She would mourn your death and separation is not an option. You are responsible for her now.”

I snorted. “I’ve been responsible for her for years. We were fine long before you arrived.”

Luna curled her tail around my neck and rubbed her head against mine. She was trying to soothe me. I reached up and scratched behind her ears while I tried to get my anger under control. We’d found out early on that she could sense emotions better than we could.

“If I’d tried to grab her out of the air, what would have happened?”

“I would have killed you,” Torran said without inflection.

I huffed out an unamused breath. “I am not so easy to kill. Would I have been able to move her?”

He pointed at the ground. “I could kill everyone on this ship without moving from this spot,” he said flatly. It wasn’t a boast so much as a statement of fact.

Cold chills broke out along my spine, raising the hair on my arms. All Valoffs seemed to have some telepathic ability, which was dangerous enough. Telekinetics were less common, and strong telekinetics were rare, thankfully, because just one could turn the tide of battle.

A strong Valovian telepath could take out a squad of humans without mental shields. A strong telekinetic could take out a battalion, and the shielding didn’t matter. If they couldn’t pierce your mind, they could crush your body.

Luna shifted restlessly and chirruped at Torran. He tilted his head and listened. After a moment, he continued the conversation as if he hadn’t just threatened to kill everyone on the ship. “You would not have been able to move her unless I had let her go. You could have hurt her. And you can tell your man behind the corner that he is no longer needed.”

I was happy for Eli to remain exactly where he was, so I responded to the first part of Torran’s sentence. “You could’ve hurt her.”

“She was in no danger from me.”

The sentence was perfectly neutral, but I heard everything he’d left unsaid. Inviting him onto my ship had been a colossal fucking mistake, and one I couldn’t fix without bankrupting us.

“You wear the shoulder guard for her?” Torran asked, changing the subject.